There is in seeing Rian Johnson’s neo-noir, BRICK, the sense that this is not just a startlingly original, wholly engrossing, and brilliantly plotted piece of work. There is the sense that it is nothing less than a flawless masterpiece made all the more remarkable for being Johnson’s maiden cinematic effort. The idioms of the noir… Read More »
THE SENTINEL
Not to be confused with the horror flick from the 70s, THE SENTINAL is a competent enough mystery/thriller set in the fractious world of White House protocols and security. It’s most interesting aspect, though, may be that while Michael Douglas might have been hired for the star power he could bring for a good opening… Read More »
AMERICAN HAUNTING, AN
Despite nocturnal scrapings, shufflings, general bumpings in the night, not to mention several rounds of people getting smacked around by unseen hands, AN AMERICAN HAUNTING is just a whole lot of nothing going on. Not wanting to leave well enough or, rather, creepy enough, alone, the filmmakers have taken a fairly well-documented and completely unexplained… Read More »
THE DA VINCI CODE
The book by Dan Brown on which THE DA VINCI CODE is based will never be mistaken for a work of genius. It is not a work for the ages, but rather fills the guilty pleasure niche in the literary food chain. It’s a fast read with an intriguing premise where a great deal happens… Read More »
THE NIGHT LISTENER
How much of what someone thinks is reality can survive the objectivity test? That’s the question posed in THE NIGHT LISTENER, based on a real-life experience and later a novel by Armistead Maupin, which ponders how perception and raw need have a nasty habit superseding everything else. The answer is an engrossing thriller that probes… Read More »
CATCH A FIRE
CATCH A FIRE is a timely consideration of what drives human beings to extremes. Based on a true story of South Africa’s time under apartheid, it shows one man radicalized from passivity to activism to armed resistance with the same dizzy speed that his illusion of security is shattered. The time is 1980 and the… Read More »
DEJA VU
The best thing that can be said about DEJA VU is that it pumped some much needed revenue into New Orleans and its environs. The second best thing that can be said about this otherwise benighted exercise is that by filming a few scenes in the ravaged Ninth Ward of that city, the devastation that… Read More »
CHILDREN OF MEN
In a here-and-now where the primacy of children is given ample lip service by proponents of any and all social issues, it is refreshing, and not a little thought-provoking, to see in Alfonso Cuaron’s CHILDREN OF MEN, based on the P.D. James novel of the same name, a world in which this is actually the case.… Read More »
BREACH
In a moment of supreme and unintentional irony, Robert Hanssen, the quarry in BREACH, tells his assistant, Eric O’Neill, who doesn’t know yet what his real assignment concerning Hanssen is, that he was never interested in making headlines, only history. Of course, they will shortly be making both, but neither of them is aware of that yet.… Read More »
THE NUMBER 23
It’s one thing when a film is bad from the very start. There is an honesty about it, a candor that is, in its own small way, praiseworthy. The same cannot be said about THE NUMBER 23. Instead of breaking one’s heart merely by being bad, it commits the far more heinous offense of offering… Read More »
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